“Time is running short.” Judgment is at hand.
Two columns from the New York Times frame how sometimes politics in the U.S. is more monarchy than democracy.
Charles Blow laments poor polling numbers for President Joe Biden amidst an electorate “tired and overwhelmed.” People are taking that out on Biden, Blow writes:
Biden is a decent man. As a matter of course and tactic, he strikes me as not entirely built for hyperbole and hype, for beating his chest while he boasts. It’s not part of his character. He is sober and straightforward. Many Americans wanted him as an antidote to Donald Trump for precisely this reason.
But America has changed its mind and its mood. It wants a show and a showman to distract from its misery. Biden is not that. And he is being punished for not being a huckster.
It is a shame, Blow goes on, that “emotional connection plays such an outsize role in our politics,” yet it does. Biden is not giving people enough with which to identify.
Shane Goldmacher notes how the unindicted Donald Trump, Biden’s predecessor, now holds court at Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Trump has “has transformed Mar-a-Lago’s old bridal suite into a shadow G.O.P. headquarters.” Arriving supplicants bring gifts, dish dirt, and parrot “his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.” They treat him as a president in exile.
Trump behaves, Goldmacher argues based on over 50 interviews, like “a modern-day party boss.” Former Trump adviser Michael Caputo describes a “developing Tammany situation” in which political aspirants visiting Mar-a-Lago seek the king’s approval, a connection they can leverage as though they have an “inside track” to winning the king’s ear and favor. None exists, Caputo says.
The pair of columns points to how much for all the pretense to individual liberty and democratic self-rule, Americans, more so on the right, still yearn for a king.
Not explicitly, Blow ties the Democrats’ fate to Biden’s. When he rises, they rise. When he falls, they fall. Policy and economics play a supporting role to court intrigue and rumors.
Republicans have abandoned all pretense. Governing is not their goal. Maintaining their power is. Theirs is tied to the king’s. They wage legislative skirmishes in the provinces to scatter the Democratic rabble, to win the king’s approval, and to rally the countryside to return him to power by any means necessary. Democracy is window dressing for them as it is for autocrats across the planet.
Meantime, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sounds more like a Biblical prophet, a voice in the wilderness. Standing outside the personality-driven side-show, she writes as if calling down judgment on a politics that has strayed from the faith (New York Times):
Republicans want to frame the upcoming elections to be about “wokeness,” cancel culture and the “militant left wing.” Standing up for the inherent dignity of everyone is a core American value, and Democrats are proud to do that every day. While Republican politicians peddle lies, fear and division, we should use every single one of the next 200 days or so before the election to deliver meaningful improvements for working people.
“Time is running short.” Judgment is at hand. Climate doom hangs in the air. Politics is rife with corruption.
“To start cleaning up government,” Warren writes, “members of Congress and their spouses shouldn’t be allowed to own or trade individual stocks, which the vast majority of voters support banning, according to multiple polls.” Woe unto ye hypocrites!
“We can stand up to the armies of lobbyists and P.R. flacks and tackle tax loopholes for the rich and powerful.” They will have their comeuppance when God’s wrath finally is manifest.
The sad part is that Warren’s voice is so lonely. The people revel in their cults of personality and fixate on leaders’ failings rather than on doing the work on the ground.
Republicans “are using parental rights as the Trojan horse to enact their agenda,” Blow complains, and Democrats are not fighting back. “They do not recognize that oppression by conservatives in this country is like an amoeba: simple, primitive, pervasive and highly adaptable. It simply shifts its shape to fit the environment and argument.”
“Democrats cannot bow to the wisdom of out-of-touch consultants,” warns Warren, shouting into the wind.
Pundits revel in their polls, Trumpers in their man-child-god.
“We have no king but Donald!”
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.